Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I imagine that when we get to the end of this year recruitment will be more than half what it was in previous years. The Deputy is correct that we have hired about 6,000 staff per year for the last three years. That has been very unusual. When we look back at previous years, a normal year in the previous five years would have meant hiring between 2,000 and 3,000 additional staff. This year, we have about 2,300 or 2,400 new staff through new development funding, so the number is still growing, and there will be additionality on top of that as well. We will probably end up with in and around 3,000 additional staff. Compared with what we will call a normal year, a pre-Covid year, we are expanding the service by about 3,000 staff, which would be seen as a pretty healthy expansion. We have just become used to these three record years of recruitment. I would love to have had funding for 6,000 staff. That would have been great but we have to work within the budgets we have.

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